For the Union, it’s not too early to go soul-searching in a season that feels like it’s slipping
The Union was supposed to pick up right where they left off after an impressive 2025 campaign. But the wins aren't stacking, and what's amiss is now beginning to become a valid question.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
The Union was supposed to pick up right where they left off. The decisions to bid farewell to three top players last season was mitigated with offseason acquisitions in the millions made to ensure the Union didn’t skip a beat.
Just look at the numbers. A forward who marked the club’s largest ever signing. A defender who was supposed to be a younger, faster version of the one who departed to Los Angeles as a two-time All-Star. Renewed contracts for players who were a big part of the success, and of course, a 16-year-old phenom waiting for his opportunity to prove his hype is real.
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This was supposed to be the year.
But eight games into the 2026 season, the Union sit at the bottom of Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference standings. And on Wednesday night, their run in the Concacaf Champions Cup came to an end in the round of 16 after a 1-1 draw against Liga MX giants Club América.
The draw stopped the bleeding, with the Union entering that match on a four-game losing streak in all competitions but they walked into Mexico City’s Estadio de la Ciudad de los Deportes trailing in the two-game series, 1-0, following a loss to América a week earlier.
What did the game look like? Well, it would’ve been fair to not know how it ended if you turned off the broadcast in the first half, because it was a performance that wasn’t worth watching. Club América would score just six minutes into the match, completely exploiting holes the in Union’s back line and making newcomers in defenders Japhet Sery Larsen and Geiner Martinez look silly.
The main culprit in the first half beatdown was America midfielder Brian Rodríguez, who torched both Sery Larsen and Martinez down the left side of the field, creating chance after chance that made a six-minute América goal seem inevitable.
By the end of the first half, Club América held the edge in almost every statistic, namely possession, as the Union was forced to press high in even higher altitude to defend and break up attacks, only to concede balls back to América thanks to poor passing or an inefficiency in what to do with the ball.
A microcosm of that arrived in stoppage time of the first half when Cavan Sullivan controlled and laid a perfect ball to a wide open forward Stas Korzeniowski in the box. However, the ball got stuck under Korzeniowski’s feet and cleared away before he could get the shot off.
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“Unfortunately, we concede very early, and when you concede here [in this] stadium against that team after five minutes, the result could go another way,” said Union head coach Bradley Carnell. “... We had to shift in a few moments in the first half there just to survive the onslaught, but without any real danger, I would say.”
What Carnell said to his collective we don’t know at this time, in part because the transmission for his postgame virtual conference continually had technical difficulties, but it worked. The Union played the role of aggressor in the second half and forced América to hang on. The heroes of the second half however, weren’t the new faces, but the unlikely ones.
A halftime decision to pull Martinez and bring in Frankie Westfield made for a noticeable improvement at right back. Sullivan continued to show flashes of what he can do and was responsible for the two of the Union’s biggest chances to get back into the game on the night, which made Carnell’s decision to make him a 62nd-minute substitute in favor of midfielder Danley Jean Jacques confusing.
“Fresh legs, first and foremost,” Carnell said when asked of the decision, “And I think you can see the push we made. I think it’s a big statement for us to, to start with a 16-year-old … I think it just shows what we stand for as a club, the development side of it. The competitiveness and the willingness to come to big environments and intimidating environments and to put on the display that they did. I was really proud of them.”
But the biggest player on the night was perhaps the most unlikely.
Jesús Bueno, the club’s quiet, unassuming midfielder, was by far the Union’s best player, running all over the field, starting attacks deep in the club’s defensive third and playing his supporting role behind the attacking midfield core in Carnell’s modified 4-4-2 formation expertly.
Bueno was rewarded for his efforts in the 49th minute, converting a Union penalty after his perfect ball into an onrushing Westfield in the box saw Westfield get his legs clipped from under him, setting up the opportunity to tie the match.
Bueno made sure of it.
“I think Jesús Bueno has been in an excellent way over the last two or three weeks,” said Carnell. “Every time he’s put on the jersey and every time he’s got minutes and played, he’s done excellently. And I think tonight was a real example of what the level of Jesús Bueno can be like. … He took this personal tonight, and he played like it meant a lot; It meant the world to him, and he emptied the tank. I’m really proud of him with the performance.”
Still, none of this amounted to the team’s ultimate goal, a win in a competition in which they’ve been to the semifinal rounds twice before and hadn’t bowed out of in the round of 16 since the 2024 season, against Mexico’s Pachuca.
The focus now shifts back to MLS play with a final game before a two-week respite because of the upcoming FIFA international window. Chicago heads to Subaru Park on Saturday (4:30 p.m., Apple TV) with the Fire’s last time on the Chester waterfront resulting in a loss in penalties to the Union in the first leg of last season’s MLS Cup playoffs.
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A win would provide hope that Carnell and Co. can right this ship with two weeks of training sessions before play resumes on April 4 against Charlotte FC (7:30 p.m., Apple TV).
This isn’t how this season was supposed to be talked about.
But the reality is that the Union must dig themselves out before things deteriorate further, and before there’s some real explaining to do in regard to what went so wrong in a year where so much was supposed to go right.